Educational pathways are broken in low-income communities – students in these areas lack continuous access to learning between home and school. The result is often slow progress during the school year and chronic regressions over the summer – year after year after year. Families are treated as liabilities in the process, as well, rather than potential assets.
Springboard Collaborative knows that there is actually promise in these pathways and, more importantly, potential in these students. They know that with the right type and level of support they can help close the students’ reading achievement gap by coaching teachers, training family members and incentivizing learning so that scholars have the requisite skills to access life opportunities. And they have the data to prove it.
Springboard launched in Oakland, California in 2015. They quickly found what GreenLight had discovered a few years before: Oakland was a community ready to dive into the challenges of early literacy. They piloted their signature summer program that summer: an intensive, five-week program that combines daily reading instruction for pre-K through 3rd graders, weekly workshops training parents to teach reading at home and an incentive structure that awards educational resources to families in proportion to student reading gains. The result was significant with major reading gains for all participating students. Springboard continues to grow its footprint in the Bay Area and beyond (San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and Fresno), bringing higher literacy rates to more students.
students and families participated in Springboard’s after-school and summer programs
COVID RESPONSE: Distance learning created opportunities to reach communities and engage hundreds of Bay Area youth in otherwise inaccessible literacy programming during the 2020-21 program year
average amount of reading growth due to after-school and summer programs
“I loved the program. It brought me and my children closer while reading together.”
- Springboard Parent
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